Tea tree oil-(melaluca) have little skin tags? dab it on every morning with a cotton swab- smells like the dickens and burns a wee bit, but the stuff is awesome, the skin tag dries up and falls off. I also use it on burns and small cuts and abrasions too, heals them right up. Put it on a scald and the burning goes right away and heals quickly. (use a carrier oil if you have senstive skin, I use 100% though) Good in a paste as toothpaste when you have mouth sores too. (mix with baking soda and water) rinse well.

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Ham and eggs...
A day's work for a chicken, a lifetime commitment for a pig.

Your so right about the tea tree oil. And the Melaleuca brand is the best quality you can get. Did you know that they also make toothpaste with the oil in it?? You can look at melaleuca dot com and see all sorts of products with the oil in it. I have been using their stuff for awhile and absolutely LOVE all of it! No more chemicals in my home! woo hoo!!!
Anyway, you should try the melagel for burns, my son burned his whole forearm and I treated it with the melagel, he doesnt even have a scar. And it was about a second to third degree burn. Now, we were very careful with it, kept it clean and dressed, but in less than a week it was healed. (not saying everyone should do that, but it worked for us!)

Anyway, I highly recommend the stuff, it also worked on some brown moles my husband had on his head, sorta surprised us, he was just using the shampoo with the tea tree oil in it and the moles just went away.... Didnt hurt our feelings any at all!

I use a tea tree oil based toothpaste. I have heard you can put tea tree oil directly on a toe nail fungus and will get rid of it. Tea tree oil mixed with olive oil as a carrier was beneficial for hubby when he had viral pneumonia. I rubbed it on his chest and back put hot cloth presses over those areas and it broke up the congestion in 48 hours. The doc did not presc. drugs as his was a viral case, we were impressed with the action of the tea tree.

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Disease is not an entity, but a fluctuating condition of the patients body, a battle between the substance of disease and the natural self healing tendency of the body......Hippocrates

I love the smell of tea-tree oil and use a lot of products (shampoo and facewash, mostly) with it, but I read something really disturbing the other day that I'm wondering if anyone else knows anything about. I saw an article in the New York Times about the all the artifical hormone-mimickers that are in the environment and how they are linked to kids going through earlier and earlier puberty, and there was example of some boys showing strange symptoms, and it was linked to their shampoo which contained tea tree oil. According to the article, it mimics estrogen, and is harmless to adults but it not good for kids. Has anyone else ever heard of anything like this for tea tree oil? I love using it myself but had never heard of it being a hormone mimicker.
Here's the link to the article:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/sc...2f7a85&ei=5070

Antigone,
After reading the article, I think their research is a little on the vague side.
Here is what I can tell you for sure:
I have been using the Melaleuca products since January. I have not got any chemicals of any kind in my home now... meaning.... I have totally converted my home to Melaleuca products. The thing about Melaleuca is, all their products contain tea tree oil. They even have tea made from the Melaleuca plant (where the oil comes from) We use everything from shampoo, soap, conditioner, toothpaste, mouthwash, dish soap, laundry soap, I mean everything with tea tree oil in it. We also use tea tree oil alone.
Now, keep in mind that Melaleuca has patents on most of their stuff, and the highest quality/purity you can get on the market,
I have 4 boys, age 20, 14, 12, 6 and one girl age 8.
We have not seen ANY change in these kids (well, you know the 14 and 12 yr old are going through puberty anyway), especially my 6 and 8 year old have suffered no effects.
So, in my opinion, from using products all over my house and my person (and my kids persons) that contain tea tree oil, it really isnt a concern.

Now, something I have always wondered... could the hormones that they feed animals be coming across in our milk, eggs, meat?
My step daughter lived with us 8 years ago, she was 12 at the time. The girl LOVED milk, drank tons of it. Within a year she went threw what I thought was super-fast puberty. from a little girl to full-blown....well, ya know.
So, that set me to wondering if it was the hormones in our milk and food, thus my quest for organic, as natural as possible foods.
Just my 2 cents.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to be alarmist - I definitely think there are way more dangerous things to have in your house than tea tree oil. I had just never heard about so-called "natural" substances mimicking hormones, but I do worry about artificial hormones in eggs, meat, and dairy. I think tea tree oil, even if it does what the article says (which, you're right, is not supported by the most hard-core science), is probably the least of our problems.

I know 100 percent tea tree oil was recommended for skin and nail infections at some diabetes education classes I attended. It does work on nails for sure.
Didn't know about the skin tags. Will have to tell my daughter to try it.

I looked into Melaleuca too....but I could find no research other than their own. Additionally, they would not simply sell me a product or two to try. I am not going to buy, totally, into something simply based upon their in-house research, and testimonials. I have a rather natural home, and most of the cleaners and such that I use are natural, and "chemical free"....But let me comment on that.

By training, I am a chemist, research scientist and secondary educator. I have lots of study done in natural and suplimental healing adn detoxification.

"Chemical free" is a total misnomer. By defintion, everythings is composed of chemicals. Baking soda, as a cleaner, is a "chemical", it's sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3. It is a MUCH more benign chemical than much of what is found in most cleaners, but it is a chemical nonetheless.

I do think that the Melaleuca Comapny has something in their "tea tree" line of products, but I assert that they ARE chemicals. They may be more benign than what else is found in other products, and they may not use some of the HBA standby's like SLS and TEA, but they DO use chemicals, undoubtedly safer, but still chemical. Saying that something is "chemical free" is totally misleading. It could be "synthetic chemical free" or "free of harmful chemicals", but since it is composed of something, it is, by definition, composed of chemicals.

That all said, I am CERTAIN that much of the illiness in society is caused by teh fact that we are all being trained to be paranoid by germs. As a nation, Chlorox has us runnign around disinfecting every surface that we see. Your immune system is like a muscle, fail to excercise it, and it gets weak. Humans lived for thousnads of years, and in those thousands of years, we managed to have indigenous peoples who lived a HUNDRED years REGULARLY...WITHOUT ANY "sanitation". Without constantly washing their hands, without cleaning ANY surface more thouroughly than a rinse in the river or swpie of the hand. Want to know why you are SO ill?? It's all around you.

EVERY thing that you intake into your body, inhale, absorb throught the skin, eat, drink...EVERY THING is EITHER treated by teh body as a nutrient, meaning that it is taken to a place in the body where it is used in some biological function, stored as future energy, or somesuch, OR it is treated as a toxin, and escorted through one of the body's detoxification pathways. IT is an either/or proposition. IF it is not contributing, it IS detracting from health. EVERY detox pathway in the body uses nutrients, vitamins and liquids to dismantle, encase, escort out or disarm things toxic to the body.

So, if you are in an environment where you are constantly getting in to things that your body must detoxify, then when the body encounters a "germ" or other infectious source, it has been depleated and cannot muster the "defence" it must. In this way, "superclean" homes become places where people GET sick.

this has been a very interesting thread. Couple of years ago, had a wierd growth on my face, where my glasses sometimes would touch my cheek. Much later I realized the growth was because during fall, I always use bag balm, or A&D ointment or vaseline on my hands for cracks, etc. Then I'd touch my face when readjusting my glasses.
Anyway, Dr wanted to cut it off, or cut it out of my skin. I went home, and regularly put tea tree oil on it. After 2 or 3 weeks, it completely disappeared. Now, got something on my chest area, and doing same thing. Using tea tree oil. Saw the nurse practicioner, and she said "dont know what it is, keep using tea tree oil'

Yup- it is great stuff- I buy it in small bottles at Wally World, for about $5.00 I think- worth every penny. put it into a regular hand lotion for us too, it really helps heal and doesn't feel as icky as bag balm and really works. My sister used to sell the melaleuca prodcuts and still gets them for herself I thought they were a bit overpriced, so I kinda make my own!

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Ham and eggs...
A day's work for a chicken, a lifetime commitment for a pig.

Tea tree oil is great for keeping the lice out of kids' hair, as well. Every school has "lice season" -- and I used to HATE getting those letters home that a child in my son's class had it -- and to check your family's heads. I started dabbing a couple drops of tea tree oil on my palms after washing DS' hair, and running it through. You can't smell it because it's such a small amount, but the lice can, apparently, and they go ELSEWHERE.

I looked into Melaleuca too....but I could find no research other than their own. Additionally, they would not simply sell me a product or two to try. I am not going to buy, totally, into something simply based upon their in-house research, and testimonials. I have a rather natural home, and most of the cleaners and such that I use are natural, and "chemical free"....But let me comment on that.

By training, I am a chemist, research scientist and secondary educator. I have lots of study done in natural and suplimental healing adn detoxification.

"Chemical free" is a total misnomer. By defintion, everythings is composed of chemicals. Baking soda, as a cleaner, is a "chemical", it's sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3. It is a MUCH more benign chemical than much of what is found in most cleaners, but it is a chemical nonetheless.

I do think that the Melaleuca Comapny has something in their "tea tree" line of products, but I assert that they ARE chemicals. They may be more benign than what else is found in other products, and they may not use some of the HBA standby's like SLS and TEA, but they DO use chemicals, undoubtedly safer, but still chemical. Saying that something is "chemical free" is totally misleading. It could be "synthetic chemical free" or "free of harmful chemicals", but since it is composed of something, it is, by definition, composed of chemicals.

That all said, I am CERTAIN that much of the illiness in society is caused by teh fact that we are all being trained to be paranoid by germs. As a nation, Chlorox has us runnign around disinfecting every surface that we see. Your immune system is like a muscle, fail to excercise it, and it gets weak. Humans lived for thousnads of years, and in those thousands of years, we managed to have indigenous peoples who lived a HUNDRED years REGULARLY...WITHOUT ANY "sanitation". Without constantly washing their hands, without cleaning ANY surface more thouroughly than a rinse in the river or swpie of the hand. Want to know why you are SO ill?? It's all around you.

EVERY thing that you intake into your body, inhale, absorb throught the skin, eat, drink...EVERY THING is EITHER treated by teh body as a nutrient, meaning that it is taken to a place in the body where it is used in some biological function, stored as future energy, or somesuch, OR it is treated as a toxin, and escorted through one of the body's detoxification pathways. IT is an either/or proposition. IF it is not contributing, it IS detracting from health. EVERY detox pathway in the body uses nutrients, vitamins and liquids to dismantle, encase, escort out or disarm things toxic to the body.

So, if you are in an environment where you are constantly getting in to things that your body must detoxify, then when the body encounters a "germ" or other infectious source, it has been depleated and cannot muster the "defence" it must. In this way, "superclean" homes become places where people GET sick.

Its a different world we live in today with the salmonella and other poisens that are in the air and food sources. You darn right I disinfect my counters, doorknobs toilet handles etc. Sure would be nice to go back to the old days but thats not gonna happen....

Its a different world we live in today with the salmonella and other poisens that are in the air and food sources. You darn right I disinfect my counters, doorknobs toilet handles etc. Sure would be nice to go back to the old days but thats not gonna happen....

salmonella has always been around with more infectious prevelance than today in water or food borne illnesses (think of typhoid or food poisonings at gatherings). 'poisons in the air' won't be at all affected by treating with tea tree oil or any other antifungal agent. Though, it's probably very good practice to disinfect door knobs, telephones, and anything that the hand can touch and reach the mouth. Respiratory viruses get around like that, but factually, that is more spread around when you leave your home in the mix of people shopping, exchanging money, being sneezed at by an infected clerk, a workmate that comes to work sick, and so on. In that case, all you could do realisitally is wear a mask, but simply washing your hands a lot helps. One rule to think about is never touch your mouth or face afte touching something that could hold a virus until you wash your hands, and then touch your face after. Maybe a bit obsessive, but if you really worry?

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The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.